“Once your membranes rupture, or I rupture them, you must remain in the bed to prevent the cord from prolapsing. You will not be allowed to get up from the bed, not even to go to the bathroom. Use a bedpan.” – OB to mother.

25 Responses to “"…Use A Bedpan."”

If you are that worried about cord prolapse, you have ruptured my membranes before the baby was engaged. And if that is the case, you are negligent. Want to keep talking about artificial rupture, or should I bring my lawyer in NOW?

omg I had the same thing done to me when I refused a catheder when I had my last hospital birth. They gave me a bed pan and wouldn’t help me with it. It was embarrassing and my water hadn’t even broken yet! They said it could break any time and they didn’t want me up and around during labor, then I was threatened by the dr with a section against my consent if I didn’t let him break my waters.

Ugh. Reading stuff like this just makes me wanna bitchslap a doctor.
I may not have had the exact birth I had wanted (ended up with an actual honest-to-God emeegency c-section, general anesthesia and all) but at least I was respected for the most part.

Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! My membranes rupture pretty early in my labors. 6 hours into my first and 10 hours into my second. I’ve never had a provider do anything but encourage me to be up and moving! They certainly didn’t want me peeing in a bedpan.

Wow, weird. My membranes ruptured early, and I waited in the hospital for 6 days before going into labor. If it had gone until 7 my doctor would have induced. I had no restrictions on movement during that time. And no cord prolapse.

Same thing happened to me! My water broke at 36 weeks on a Tuesday and my labor didn’t start until late Saturday morning, not even pitocin could get it going. All I ever heard was “stay up and moving so we can get that labor started”
I even had an awesome doctor who distracted the nurse so I could go walk outside and get some fresh air! I think that did it because my son was born 6 hours later

This was my client. We did move around, considerably, she did use a bedpan but i cleaned it out not the Nurses. Luckily she had a nurse that had a brain and “allowed” us to move because the babies head was firm against the cervix so no risk of cord prolapse. OBs today presume every labor is a disaster waiting to happen. Women are not flawed, natural birth process is not flawed! Trust your bodies and take pride in your amazing abilities! In Doula Spirit:)

I’ve never used a bed pan but I can’t imagine how it would be used lying down (without getting pee everywhere), don’t you have to sit up to use it? If so, how would that be significantly different then standing up to go to the washroom?

Ann, I agree, that doctor scares me, possibly rupturing membranes when the baby isn’t engaged (or maybe he just doesn’t understand that if the head is in the way then the cord won’t (shouldn’t?) get compressed).

How contradictory! Letting mama get upright lets the baby settle onto the cervix to prevent the cord from prolapse. Whether she’s making her way to the toilet or sitting on a bedpan, gravity is gravity. Give mom some dignity to pee in private.

My waters had broken at 33 weeks and I was transferred out of my midwife’s care to a dr she’d worked with before and after getting checked into the hospital, the first time I’d had to pee the nurse told me the dr had said no getting up and I did have to use a bed pan…it was sooo humiliating and can you guess what I ended up with 12 hrs later (18 hrs after waters broke and some “steady” ctx, then @ 5 am non reassuring fhr)? If you guessed c section, you’re right…I don’t even know if the dr had actually said that I couldn’t be up and moving but if I had been it might have helped my labor along. Sorry to the mama this happened to, I totally feel the humiliation!

Were they trying to keep you from going into labor, or to keep it from progressing, maybe? My water broke at 31 weeks with my first and I wasn’t allowed out of bed, or even to sit up, because they wanted to keep all pressure off my cervix to stave off labor as long as possible. Not that it worked, I had him that night, but I understood the rationale.

Same thing happened to me! My water broke at 36 weeks on a Tuesday and my labor didn’t start until late Saturday morning, not even pitocin could get it going. All I ever heard was “stay up and moving so we can get that labor started”
I even had an awesome doctor who distracted the nurse so I could go walk outside and get some fresh air! I think that did it because my son was born 6 hours later :)

Well, perhaps she had polyhydramnios or was multigravid (risk factors for cord prolapse), or perhaps they had seen on an ultrasound that there was an unfavorable position for the cord. What if the membranes were ruptured because the pregnancy had progressed more than 2 weeks past the due date? And by the way, you don’t have to sit to use a bedpan, so it is not the same as sitting on a toilet. Also, I have no doubt that the tone in which these words are represented here is not representative of what was actually said – ie, I believe there is a healthy dose of poetic license taken.

How about realising you don’t have the slightest bit of REAL information about the situation, and therefore you shouldn’t judge? What a bunch of ignorant, judgmental, NON-MEDICAL twits.

So now any multip with ruptured membranes shouldn’t be up out of bed????? Or mom with a post dates pregnancy?? (not that many people go past 42 weeks these days…)Wooowwww….

And I have no doubt that the tone in which these words were represented here is an accurate reflection of what actually transpired; if you believe that nobody speaks to laboring women like this, you’re woefully ignorant.

Also, regardless of what actually happened, if this experience is enough to traumatize the mother to submit it to a site like this, there is something wrong. Much of the available data about psychological trauma after childbirth suggests that it isn’t the interventions themselves that are traumatic, it’s whether the mother felt she had any decision making power regarding her body and her birth. Stripping power from adult women in this way is not okay, especially when no real emergency exists.

Also, the OB in this post implied he or she was planning to artificially rupture. Artificially rupturing somebody with poly with an amnihook in the LDR room is irresponsible and dangerous, as is rupturing somebody with an “unfavorable cord position” whatever that means (I’m assuming funic presentation, in which case if you know that’s there you probably shouldn’t touch her bag with any sharp implement…)

@Lisa- No, they said since I was “already contracting” they weren’t going to try to stop labor, and I was 95% effaced, 1-2 dilated, and at the end of it all still only 1-2 cm…I wish they’d at least have let me move around to help labor since they weren’t going to stop it, but I’ll never know thanks to the continuous EFM that sparked the frenzy that the dr took as reason to go ahead with the section. I was too tired to fight, first time mom scared out of my mind and totally not wanting to be in the hospital in the first place, but ohhh well, better knowledge for the future.

This is why I’m laboring at home as loooong as possible, hopefully after my water breaks. But I asked the L&D tour RN and she said as long as baby’s head was engaged I could get up for whatever I wanted – potty, tub, walking, etc. I respect that decision. I don’t want a cord prolapse and that’s pretty impossible if baby’s head is already descending.